Excuse me while I light up a big, fat cigar and slip on my pinkie ring so I can call my politician pals and tell them what they need to do to make me happy. Yeah, right. First of all, I don’t smoke, and I got the pinkie ring for my bar mitzvah except it wasn’t meant for my pinkie then.
But, that’s my job. I’m a lobbyist. And, I love it!
For as much as I admire President Obama, I take exception to his exemption of all lobbyists from serving in his administration. After all, who really knows this stuff? And, I mean there’s a lot of “stuff,” including every issue known to humankind in which somebody has a stake. Who tells their story? Who fights for their cause? Who gets results? It’s usually not the average citizen who is subsumed by the bureaucratic anarchy of government at every level.
Lobbyists are like lawyers in that they represent a client. Whether we’re representing workers or bosses, shareholders or public employees, it’s all about knowing how the system works and how to make it work for your client. Somebody’s got to do it. That’s how democracy works.
I have a good friend who spent 10 years in Congress. He is an expert on foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, but he has been precluded from being offered a position because, as an attorney, he registered as a lobbyist to ensure that he didn’t break any ethics rules. Our nation is not well served when individuals of his caliber are denied the opportunity to continue serving their country.
When I first got involved in politics in 1968 in the Robert Kennedy for President campaign, there were approximately 300 registered lobbyists in Washington. Today there are over 35,000.
Without a lobbyist for your cause you have to learn the maze yourself, and that can take a lifetime. Lobbyists are often the institutional memory of the legislative process. And, it’s not like we work in a vacuum. We are representing one side of an issue and there is a lobbyist representing the other side, and maybe many lobbyist representing many sides. It’s up to elected officials and their staffs to sift through all of the information they are given to make an informed decision. And woe be the lobbyist who gets an elected official or staff member in trouble.
Like lawyers and journalists, we’ve become a working part of the direct democracy machine. It you keep lobbyists out of the process. you violate the very basis of the Constitution – equal representation under the law.
Besides, we’re not so bad once the smoke clears out of that back room.